


An Honest Mistake

by kittydesade



Category: Wild Cards - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade





	An Honest Mistake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/gifts).



It was late. It was dark.

Ariadne stuffed her hands deeper into her pockets, knowing that she'd have to take them out again on the short walk along the unlit portion of the sidewalk and again at her door and her hands would freeze up to the second knuckle at least. It was worth it, even for the momentary warmth between stepping off the bus and hitting the first streetlight. 

She kept her hands out that short distance between the bus stop and when the streetlights worked again. Just in case. 

"Hey, sweet lady," Butcher called. Butcher was still a butcher by trade, but when he card turned he was packed off to Jokertown by a small New York suburb that didn't like a man who couldn't fit through doorways with the breadth of his shoulder and looked like rotting meat, gray and green and flaking around the edges. No one in Jokertown minded. Ariadne watched his kids sometimes on the weekends, and he gave her select slices off the top for stew and stir fry. 

She spared a smile for him even though she was in a hurry to get back to her warm damn apartment. "Hey, Butcher." 

"You want to be careful, yeah, there's strange folk about." 

Ariadne's hand closed around her keys, icy metal slipping between her fingers. "Strange folk? Around here?" she looked around, gasping as though the idea shocked her. This part of town, everyone was strange folk. 

Butcher shrugged. "People been asking questions, government questions, you know. No one been making no bones about being anywhere else. But they're up to something, and it won't be no good for us."

She liked that about him, too. Some of the residents of Jokertown, okay, most of them, they didn't trust her. The kinder ones allowed that she might have some Joker trait hidden by the baggy sweaters and blue jeans she wore, even on warm days. The others said that she still looked like a nat, so she should stay the fuck back in nat territory where she belonged. Butcher, Peanut, Sicko, they didn't care. Sicko had gotten her her first job at the daycare, setting the stage for a long sequence of jobs cleaning up other people's bodily fluids. "I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

"You do that." He tipped an imaginary hat. "Good evening, sweet lady."

"Evening to you, too." 

A few more steps and she was trotting up the short steps to her building's front door, fumbling her keys from a defensive position to one from which she could actually open the damn lock. She might look like a nat, but that wouldn't stop anyone from painting her a target on her back like everyone else who lived in Jokertown. Government questions meant government attention and she, like everyone else, had learned that government attention rarely meant good things. With the election chugging ever closer, she was more anxious than usual to avoid that. Anything that involved the words "Bureau" or "Secretary" or came from an organization based out of Washington DC. 

"Hey, kiddo..." Brendan came tottering into her arms, and she heaved him up to around her waist as she stood. "Were you good for Nana?" 

"Oh, he was an angel, as always." 

Nana wasn't actually her Nana, or Brendan's Nana, she was an older woman at the center on the edge of retirement, but since she worked opposite shifts to Ariadne she was the one who most often watched Brendan when Ariadne had to work late. "That's my bright boy," she touched her son's nose with her own. "Come on, if you get into your PJ's quick I'll tell you a story before bed."

"Story story story story story..." 

Nana laughed, watching the boy pinwheel his way into his bedroom and deftly kite around the toys left on the floor. "Shouldn't have done that. Now he'll be up all night."

"No he won't. I'll tell him Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." She pressed a few bills into Nana's hand, ignoring the tickling of the fine black hairs. "Thanks, Nana. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Of course," she smiled, and creaked her way out the door. It made Ariadne smile, too, a day when everything went well and she had the money to pay Nana, when Brendan had been a good boy and she had the energy to spend time with him before bedtime.

That didn't stop her from drawing down the blackout curtains and double checking that all the windows were locked before bedtime.

  


  


  


This time around he'd drawn a Deuce, so rather than create glittershowers with a snap of his fingers to amuse very young children he hung around the Jokertown clinic instead. Tachy had treated him well when he didn't have to, helping out at the Clinic was just a thing he could do to return the favor. Though right now the Doc was off wandering the Earth or some Kwai Chang Caine Kung Fu shit like that.

"Wish I could wander the earth," Croyd grumbled, somewhat good-naturedly. Nobody paid him any attention, for the damn good reason that two assault victims came in, only one of them on a gurney. The other one came in on a shipping pallet, rolled in on a pallet jack by a grumpy looking guy in uniform. "Then again, maybe I should stick right here."

Dr. Finn shouldered a couple of horrified, eager onlookers out of the way and began triage. "What are you doing here?" He barely looked at Croyd.

"Hey, take it easy, Doc. I'm just here to help. It's me, Croyd."

It took the doctor a couple of minutes to come up for air long enough to put the two together. "What can you do?" The joker on the shipping pallet started twitching; Croyd couldn't tell if he was having a seizure or trying to get all his legs on the ground so he could stand. Assessment of his usefulness would have to wait.

"Here," one of the nurses smacked him on the arm with the back of her hand. "You can help me with these."

Sure, restocking kits and taking away dirty needles, he could do that. Manual labor was fine, it was anything that required a nursing certificate that he was out of his league on. Though he'd picked up some first aid skills here and there, just out of basic survival instinct. He didn't think the doc, or Finn for that matter, would want him mucking around in the clinic without some kind of training they could be sure of, though. And no hard feelings on that score. Not when he'd just woken up and was all fresh and perky. 

"What did I miss? I'm Croyd, by the way." In case she hadn't heard him earlier. Most of the staff at the clinic knew his name at least, even if it was kind of pointless to try and remember his face.

She looked a little easier at that. "Ariadne. Not much? People are getting edgy, the election's already getting ugly and government spooks have been wandering around Jokertown."

He'd heard about the election; the spooks were new. Though not too surprising, given the higher profile of the Wild Card lately. "You'd think," he gritted his teeth as he hauled up a bag out of a trash can marked 'biohazard.' She hissed, moved to intercept him. "Sorry, not supposed to do that, right. You'd think they'd figure out by now, g-men in suits are going to stand out a mile in Jokertown."

"Uh-huh," she gritted her teeth too, the bag was as big as she was, almost. "Which is why you gotta wonder what's going on that we're not seeing."

He stopped, letting the other end of the bag waft slowly down into the bin. "You think someone's trying to mess with Jokertown?" No, he saw where she was going with that. He would have gotten there himself except the idea of nats in suits getting any kind of clear reading on Jokertown was laughable, and he'd been too busy laughing.

"I don't know," she shook her head. "Butcher said something, but I haven't heard anyone else say anything. Maybe I'm just being paranoid."

Croyd opened his mouth to point out that it wasn't paranoia when the whole damn world was out to get you for being a freak when one of the other nurses he recognized from morning shift came up, a four year old boy in tow. Ariadne's face drained of color so fast it looked like an ace reflex, and she dropped to one knee to scoop her son up. At least, he thought it was her son. Judging by the way the boy clung to her and buried his face in her shoulder.

"Are you crazy?" she hissed at the other nurse. "Bringing him here, with all of this? What the hell are you..." 

Finn had drawn the privacy shield around one of the larger patient areas, but a couple of the legs still draped off the edge of the shipping pallet. Croyd wondered if that poor bastard could get splinters. 

"I didn't know where else to bring him," the older nurse fretted. "They were knocking on all the apartment doors, they were asking about you. About Brendan." 

"About..." 

Croyd snuck around behind the women, caught Brendan's attention. Poor kid. Jokertown's ER could be scary for a four year old on a good day, and with this many bloody bodies wheeling in it was far from a good day. He put a finger to his lips till the kid nodded that he could keep quiet, then snapped the fingers of his right hand. A little red fireworks display popped out of his index finger. Brendan smiled.

"Shit..." Ariadne sighed, obviously biting back some other words, though Croyd didn't know why. It sounded like Brendan had a pretty good education already. "Oh... oh, hey. Hey, you two, you look like you're getting along. Can you watch him for a second while I figure this out? Thanks..."

"Hey, no, I was just..." He tried some similar protests, but she was already into the hallway and it sounded lame, anyway. And Brendan was looking at him like he didn't know whether to start crying or hug his legs. Croyd sighed, tried to remember what four years old was like. That had been a long time ago. "Okay, kid. Brendan, was it?" 

Brendan nodded. His nose was starting to snot.

Croyd managed to squat down to about the kid's level without losing his balance. It had been a while since he'd been this short, his center of gravity was lower than he was used to. "You wanna see another magic trick?"

  


  


  


Ariadne had a headache, and its name was Jack.

When they met he'd said his name was Jack Bronson, and she'd never questioned it, but what she wanted to do was roll her eyes and ask him how in the hell he thought he could run that kind of alias past anyone with half a brain and a history book. Or even a picture book of history. At least get some makeup, face prosthetics, something. Looking back on it, that should have been her first clue. For a guy who lit up like Christmas every time he used his powers, he wasn't all that bright. Pretty dumb for a bright guy.

She leaned against the wall of the supply closet and rubbed her temples to get rid of the headache. Or if it came down to it, there were one-dose packs of acetaminophen around here somewhere. Right in this very closet, she thought.

So, okay, men in suits were asking about her and her kid. So, okay, men in suits were crawling around Jokertown. That didn't mean anything. Golden Boy was off promoting Senator what's-his-name, it didn't have anything to do with her. Except when it did. If Golden Boy was promoting some presidential candidate, smearing one of his supporters would be a great way to smear the candidate without looking like that was what they were doing. So of course she was being vetted.

"This is not my goddamn fault!" she screamed. In the hall, footsteps slowed. She closed her eyes and waited for the knock on the door that didn't come.

They hadn't even done anything yet. She was just being paranoid.

Ariadne pulled off her sweater and ran her fingers through her hair till it stuck out at all ends, then closed her eyes. Started to move her lips, words coming out in puffs of chilled air, then the air took on a blue glow. The memories seeped out of her mouth, wisps of blue light coalesced into figures and lines that stretched into walls. As she made the words they made pictures in her head that came out in front of her, balanced on her hands. The picture of a young woman crying, panicking. The picture of an infant in a doctor's arms, the lights dimming and sparking less as it wound to the inevitable conclusion, mother and son living quietly together. It was a pretty story, at least, and it helped her calm down some. She could do this. If she had to, she could take Brendan, disappear out of Jokertown. People never expected normal-looking women with cute four year old boys to come wandering out of Jokertown, she could get a couple hundred miles before they tracked her down. 

What if it wasn't about the election, though? What if Jack wanted his kid? What if, after four years of being ignored, okay, three. She hadn't even considered telling him until Brendan was nearly a year old. But he could have looked her up any time after they decided it wasn't working, and he didn't. Willfully ignoring the fact that she'd picked up the phone five times to call him, to tell him, and never made it past the first three digits. The one time she did call the phone number had been disconnected.

She closed her eyes and pressed the knuckles of her fists into her forehead until the pressure made the guilt go away. It wasn't her fault Jack was an overbearing ass. 

She could always go ask the government stooges what they wanted. From the sound of it Jack hadn't sent them, some faceless organization had. Probably the Senator's party. But she didn't know that, and they were coming after her and her boy. Maybe Butcher had known and just hadn't wanted to tell her.

The knock on the door sent her jumping, with a shriek and a closed fist in front of her. "It's Croyd," came the startlingly tenor voice from the other side. "I got a little kid here wants to know if his Mommy's going to take him home soon."

Shit. Fuck, and other words she shouldn't say in front of Brendan. "I'm sorry, baby," she told her son, taking another second or two to unbind the thread from her fingers and grab her sweater from the shelf where she'd thrown it. "I'm sorry, sweetie. Mommy had to think some things over in a quiet place." She crouched down when she opened the door, scooped Brendan up again. 

Croyd looked uncomfortable, but not more so than any other guy who'd had a young child thrust on him with no warning. "I mean, I guess I could, we could keep watching him, but..."

"No, that's okay." She started to ask if he could let Finn know she was taking her boy home, then chomped down on some more swear words. Home wasn't safe anymore. "I just, um. I just have to figure out where we're going to stay for a couple of days."

Brendan buried his face in her shoulder again. "Mommy? Can we go home..."

"Soon, baby. In a couple of days." One hand stroking his hair, calming him down. Trying to settle herself down so he would calm down, not let the fear of him being afraid get to her. Hospital sounds trickled on by, and she almost missed what Croyd was saying.

"... know a safehouse, if you want." 

Ariadne had already put her calm face on by this point, so at least the look she gave him wasn't too dubious or hostile. She knew who Croyd was, it was hard to miss in Jokertown, especially at the clinic, and everyone knew the jingle. "You. Know a safehouse?" Give it a couple of weeks, she didn't know how safe it would be if Croyd knew about it.

"Well. I know a guy who knows a guy."

  


  


  


Some days Jack Braun still couldn't believe he'd gotten involved in politics again. The last time he'd done that it had ended badly. He'd sworn he'd never get involved with politics again; a stint in the Korean War was about as close as he'd gotten. That was more about being a soldier again, being worth something and fighting for something than anything political. And here he was, getting ready to stump for Hartmann.

"You all right in there?" Someone knocked on the door of his hotel bathroom. Jack shook his head. 

"Yeah, I'll be out in a minute!" 

No privacy on these tours. But it was a good cause, right? The World Health Organization, getting a good look at Wild Cards all over. Some of them had it all right. Some of them, not so much. He'd been through some of the seamy underbelly of the United States Wild Card population, he'd seen the conditions American jokers were living in, but it might be better to be ignored than hauled out of their homes and burned or stoned to death for their imagined crimes. Whatever it was people made up to say they deserved to be turned into freaks. He'd gotten lucky. He'd gone to bed one day and woke up lifting deuce-and-a-halfs, entire shipping crates full of emergency rations. Here in Rabat he was looked at with mild disdain, but that was more for being a consummate Westerner and American than for being a Wild Card. The kid outside the hotel who'd been begging for crusts with tiny, narrow thorns growing out of the backs of his arms hadn't been so lucky.

This was a bad idea. He wasn't cut out for diplomacy, that had been David's thing. He went where he was told and picked up what he was told to pick up, stepped in front of the real heroes and put himself between them and the bullets, and that was his job. And he was pretty much fine with that. He'd tried to do something more complicated once, and it hadn't worked out. These days his heroics were limited to small things he could be pretty sure weren't going to hurt anyone else.

And a little voice in the back of his head when he stretched out in his too-stiff hotel bed at two in the morning told him that was the coward's way out, but he was beyond listening.

Someone else knocked on the door, and Jack fastened his belt and pulled his shirt on as he replied. "Yeah, I'm just getting dressed, I'll be out in..." He reached to open the door as he spoke, attempting to button his shirt one-handed and getting the buttons one off. 

Hartmann was in the doorway, hand raised to knock again. A mild-looking older gentleman with a slightly receding hairline and an earnest expression, Jack found himself relaxing in the next instant. And, coincidentally, found it easier to unbutton and button his shirt properly. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah. Uh." Cuffs, collar. "Yes, Senator. Sorry, I was just... I got distracted."

"Just thinking." Senator Hartmann smiled, understanding. "There's been a lot to think about these past several days."

There was. Had been. And a lot of things that hadn't been made officially public yet, although the press was having a field day with the speculation. After forty some odd years of paying attention, Jack wouldn't say they were wrong either, even if he hadn't known what he knew. "Yes, there has." And he was about ready to give his answer, too, but it stuck in his throat. "I'll be down in a second?"

Hartmann nodded. "Take your time. We'll be waiting."

Which wasn't the same as take your time, but Jack felt a little better anyway. At least a little better about making a difference today, which was all he could stand to worry about. Do something good today, while he was on this tour thing and everything changed sometimes several times in the same day, and then worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Make long term plans when he was back Stateside. He could do that.

Jack finished buttoning his shirt and rolled up his sleeves some and grabbed his things, trotting down the steps two at a time as he went out to join the rest of the tour.

  


  


  


He didn't realize she knew Father Squid, although after a couple minutes it seemed more like the people at the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker knew her. She asked about Father Squid, but he was off somewhere in Jakarta or something like that. His assistant, a man named Father Bugsy, was more than willing to step up, though. "Of course we can find a safe place for you and your boy," the priest told her. Croyd had had a pretty good idea he'd say that. "Come this way, we'll get you settled."

And while Father Bugs was doing that, Croyd would be doing a little investigation of his own. People snooping around Jokertown happened often enough; it seemed like every few years someone took an idea to clean up Jokertown, or convert them, or something like that. It never worked. But people snooping around asking about specific Jokertown residents, even nats, that was something else. And there was a kid involved. Croyd kind of liked kids.

If they'd gone after Brendan's nanny, they'd go after his teacher next. Assuming Ariadne had him enrolled in some kind of day care. It didn't take too much asking around, there were only so many daycare facilities in Jokertown and once he got himself proved as Croyd, they at least were willing to answer his questions just to get him to leave. "It's not _that_ bad, yet," he muttered. It wasn't. Give it another week and then maybe. 

"They were just here," the harassed-looking daycare manager said, just to get Croyd to stop riling up the kids with fireworks displays. "Look, it's almost naptime, they were going to go walk down the street and ask in coffee shops or something, can you please..."

"Sure," he grinned. "Be good, kids." And one last little razzle-dazzle. He bounced out of the door and down the steps to the tune of excited screeching. 

In all the riot of colors and shapes that was Jokertown, a couple boring-looking white men in suits with sunglasses and walking heavy on one hip stood out a mile. They didn't seem to care if they stood out either, which was their first mistake. Some of the local gangs were taking notice, as though the g-men were coming after them. Croyd thought he saw a couple of Werewolves lurking in an alley and making faces like imminent violence. 

"Hey," he grinned, walking up to the g-men. "What's happening? What's up..." 

They looked at him like they had looked at every other citizen of Jokertown. Then they turned away, not even bothering to tell him off for interrupting. Around them a circle of quiet and then absence started to spread. No one wanted to mess with someone messing with authority. 

"Aw, come on, don't be like that," he moved forward, quickly, interrupting their next move. "I just wanna talk to you..." 

He'd never done this before. First time for everything, right? If it didn't work there was always falling back to good old-fashioned fists-to-the-face violence, but first he yanked one of the g-men's sunglasses off when they turned around again, exasperated. Then he sparked the man in the face. The g-man screamed, held his hands up to his eyes. Croyd smelled something burning. 

"Whaddaya know," he muttered, grabbing the other guy by the arm, his dominant arm, to keep him from his gun. "That worked."

This guy had some training at least; Croyd had to work to get an arm around the man's throat, bending him backwards against his chest so he could stuff his fist down his captive's mouth. "You are..." his partner gasped, trying to keep at least a smidgen of dignity. "You're und-- _fucker._ " 

Croyd didn't know how bad he'd damaged the guy's eyes, didn't care right now. "What, you come into Jokertown, you harass the people here, you scare a really nice young woman and her son out of their minds, and _I'm_ the motherfucker here?" he snorted. "What are you doing here? Why are you trying to interrogate Jokertown?"

"What do you care," the man scrubbed his eyes, and Croyd saw white between the knuckles. So he hadn't cooked the man's eyeballs in his sockets. "She's not one of you, she's not a joker."

Behind him, Butcher and Mrs. Collingsworth from the bakery next door were coming up, so far unarmed and looking curious about what was going on, but he'd run afoul of Mrs. Collingsworth when he was speeding and she had a strong arm with a cast-iron skillet. One of the Graeae girls raised her eyeless head his way, and if that was Doughboy jigging from foot to foot in the back of the coffee shop things really were going to get messy here, soon.

"She's a citizen of Jokertown," Croyd insisted, making up his mind. He shoved his hand further into the g-man's mouth, making him choke on it. "Are you going to talk or do I have to blow his head off from the inside out?"

He didn't know if he could do that or not. They didn't know he was bluffing. Butcher called down from the street. "I'd listen to Mister Croyd, I was you," he said. "Don't know how long he's been awake this time. Might do you just for giggles." Taking the cue, Croyd stretched his lips into a manic, amped up grin. It was easy to pretend.

The g-man lowered one hand from his eyes, revealing burst capillaries and singed skin. Panicked, either by the prospect of seeing someone's head exploded or by the growing murmur of restless, angry Jokertown folk surrounding him, he started to talk.

  


  


  


Croyd Crenson turned out to be a pretty nice guy. When he wasn't speeding. Ariadne listened, leaning against the arm of the bench with Brendan tucked up asleep in a blanket in front of her. 

"I guess they're going after everyone who's connected, who's in Jokertown." Croyd shrugged. "I did a little digging. Two other women have been harassed. They're going after the clinic next, going to call it a Health Inspection or something. There's only so much they can do to the clinic, though..."

She nodded. She felt a headache coming on. "Because it's public, and it's well known, and people love a feel good story about doctors working in hard conditions. Even if those conditions are right here in the US of A. Charity groups, the ACLU would be all over that if they tried to do anything. Plus involvement with the clinic looks good." 

"At least for most groups," Croyd nodded. "But they think you're going to make a fuss, go public, demand money, something. Did you actually sleep with Golden Boy?"

God, why had he asked that, it wasn't like it wasn't obvious. "Long time ago. It was a fling, it didn't go anywhere. Honestly, he didn't even seem that interested in me. Like he was doing it to make himself feel better about his marriage collapsing or something. I was as surprised as anyone when I turned up pregnant..." 

Croyd grimaced sympathetically, in that distant way of someone who'd never had to deal with it. "But you worked it out?"

That was the sticking point. She tucked her face down to Brendan's hair and kissed the top of her boy's head, while Croyd waited and stared at her and realization started to roll over him. 

"You didn't tell him."

"What was I supposed to say?" Ariadne whined. It felt like whining. Brendan stirred, and she smoothed her hand over his hair and down his tiny shoulder again, forcing herself to keep her voice calm and even. "When I found out I was seven weeks along, okay? That's almost four times longer than our relationship lasted. I didn't know for certain he was the father, and I didn't want to try to track down Jack Braun and tell him, hey, you're going to have a kid. For all I know, he would have told me to get lost, handed me a wad of cash. I didn't want his goddamn money," she hissed at Croyd, "He didn't have anything I wanted. He couldn't, he proved that the couple weeks we were together."

Croyd interrupted her with upraised hands. "Okay, okay. It's none of my business, all right?" 

"Thank you," Ariadne settled back again, and so did Brendan.

"But these guys, they aren't nice like me. They're going to make it their business. And they're going to keep coming and keep bothering you until they know you're not a threat anymore. And I don't know what that means to them, but I know what it's meant to a lot of people like them, in the past."

She brought her hands up to her hair and dug her fingers in, tugging on sizable clumps. "Disappearing." The kind of disappearing that came with the help of faceless men with identical black guns and meant no cop in the city would find you. As if any cop would look for one poor nat who'd disappeared out of Jokertown. 

"Yeah." 

Her hands opened up, flattened, palms pressed into her temples. "I need to think about this." Thankfully, Croyd didn't argue.

  


  


  


"Jack?"

"... Who is this? How did you get this number?"

There was a hitch in the breathing on the other end of the phone. Whoever this broad was, she didn't want to talk about that. "I guess you don't remember me." Or she was disappointed and Jack was supposed to know who she was. Shit. "It's Ariadne."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and after a second, sure, he did remember. "Ariadne." Pretty girl, long dark blonde hair, worked at the clinic. "Yeah, I remember." And that had been years ago. "Why are you calling?" 

She was silent again, this time for a full minute and a half, he watched the seconds tick by on the hotel clock. There was some noise in the background, too, sounded like someone talking. "They're investigating me, Jack. Because of you. Some organization, I mean. They're going through your past, they probably interviewed your ex-wives..."

"Yeah, I heard about that." He'd gotten an earful, too. Didn't want to repeat the experience. "Look, just answer their questions as much as you feel comfortable and send them to me, okay? They'll leave you alone if you just answer a few questions, I'm not even the one running, they shouldn't..."

"It's not about me," she interrupted. "It's about our son."

Jack missed the bed and went straight to the floor, bruising his tailbone and sending up a little gold flash like an electric spark. "Come again?" This wasn't real. This was some warped hallucination caused by Tachyon's sick sense of humor or too many free margaritas last night. This wasn't reality, he didn't have kids, he didn't have a family, he didn't settle down. This wasn't happening to him. This never happened to him.

She had started talking. "...after you left. I knew something was wrong, I thought it was just flu, and then there was some, um. You don't want to hear that."

If it involved anything to do with women's bodies Jack wanted nothing to do with it. "And you just had the baby?" He leaned up against the edge of the bed, feeling overheated and like someone was screwing bolts into his brain. "You had the baby..." His son. Their son. He had a son. The words circled the drain in his head as he tapped his fingers on the back of the phone.

That noise in the background. That wasn't some distant conversation. That was his son playing in the next room.

No, it still didn't make sense.

"I didn't want anything from you. I still don't. We had some fun, yeah, but we weren't good together, we didn't even like each other at the end, there, you remember that? And you just walked off and you had your life, I had mine, and you forgot about me. But I couldn't forget about you. You could just move on, I couldn't move on, I had a kid to worry about now." 

She sounded upset. She sounded like she was shouting at him from the other end of a tunnel. "You could have told me, I would have sent you money..."

"Oh for f-- It wasn't about the money. I have a job, Jack, I don't need your money. I needed you to be there. You weren't there even when we were sleeping together, you were off somewhere else. With someone else, for all I know, maybe I was just a substitute for someone else. I know you weren't interested in me." And then, though he didn't think she meant to say it out loud. "I wonder if you were interested in any of the women you slept with..." and he lost the rest of that when he dropped his head onto his knees, dropped the phone by his side.

That stung. Too close to home, too close to those feelings of distance and still playing parts, after forty years and a couple rounds of a failed acting career. And the mother of his son didn't want anything to do with him, he hadn't even known he had a son. By rights, he should go back and talk to her, try to make it work. But after three failed marriages, he was damn sure he wasn't the expert on being a good husband, and he didn't know anything about being a father. Right now he didn't know if he knew anything about being a decent fucking human being. 

She'd gone silent. He picked up the phone again. "Ariadne? You still there?" 

"I'm still here." The babbling was closer, now. Maybe she was sitting on the floor, playing with the kid. What did he look like? More like her or more like him? "I don't want anything, Jack, I just want to be able to live my life. That means calling off the goon squad." 

He nodded, trying to think, to plan through the adrenaline high and crushing self-pitying lows. "I'll talk to, um." He shouldn't say that. It wasn't public yet. "I'll talk to some people, get them to pull the surveillance or whatever it is." 

"Okay. Thanks."

Jack tried to think how much longer he could stay on the phone. Everything about the tour had gone right out of his head, he didn't know what he was doing today, who they were meeting. Were they flying out of here today or was that tomorrow morning? His heels scuffed on the carpet as he stretched out. "Can I see him?" Him. It. He didn't know his own son's name. "What's his name?"

"Brendan."

She sounded tired. "Brendan." He had a son named Brendan. "Can I see him?"

"I don't... Yeah. Okay. I thought you were on your thing." 

"I can take a couple of days off." And if he couldn't, well, the hell with the WHO tour. This was his kid, his responsibility, his son, goddammit. If they didn't understand that then to hell with all of them. "I can fly over for a day or so. Where are you?" He lurched off of the floor and scrabbled for a pencil and the hotel-provided pad of paper. 

"Jokertown. Um..." she gave him an address, but he had to ask her to repeat it.

"Jokertown, why the hell are you in... no, look, let me help out, okay? At least that much, I can pay for you two to live somewhere nice, safe..."

Her exasperated sigh cut him off before she even started to speak. "Jokertown is safe for us. And we're living there because if Brendan's card turns and he draws a joker, I want him to understand that there are people who will love him for who he is, not whatever the wild card gave him."

Jack snapped the tip of the pencil off on the paper. He hadn't thought of that. Obviously she had, she would have had to, it was part of the amnio, but he hadn't thought about the prospect that his kid would have the wild card virus. No wonder she wanted him to stay away. Putting that kind of stress, the relationship they'd had or, well, hadn't had. Ariadne was right about that part, at least. He liked women, sure, but he'd never found anyone he could really click with. His best friend had died decades ago. 

Brendan would have figured that out, and when he got older it would have bothered him, and the virus would activate. And maybe it would kill him. Jack's skin iced over at that thought.

"... still there?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm still here." 

The rest of that was easy. They worked out the details of when he'd come by, how long he'd stay around. Not long, not this first time. If it went well they would just have to see. He'd call off the goon squad, explain to Greg that this was a private matter between the two of them. Three of them. Greg would understand. About the rest of it, he'd just have to see when he got there.

  


  


  


Ariadne had her house shawl wrapped around her coat at the shoulders when he came up in a gleaming black sedan. He couldn't have said he was rich and connected much louder if the car had had flags flapping from all four points. She tucked her hands under her arms and wondered if this was a bad idea. It probably was. 

Jack came out of the car, looking not a day older, looking the same as he had for the last forty years or more. She pushed that out of her mind, as she suspected most women who slept with him did, and came forward to shake his hand.

"Jack." 

"Ariadne," he nodded, and leaned in to kiss her cheek. She turned her head just to make sure he did, in case he had ideas. He didn't act as though he expected anything from her. Maybe it was better that he didn't. They could start from just past strangers and work their way up to friends. Maybe. "How is..."

"He's fine. He's just inside." She took a deep breath and tried to convince herself that this was a good thing. Jack looked at her as though he actually saw her, which he never had in all the two weeks they'd been together. So that was a good start. "Why don't you come in and say hello?"

He nodded. Followed her up the steps through the echoing high-ceilinged halls, into the warmth of her apartment. It wasn't what he was used to, half the furniture and decorations looked either second-hand or well-worn, and the floor was fucking freezing. But his son was sitting on the thick and faded carpet, playing with toys. Log Cabin toys, he remembered those from when he was a kid. Brendan looked up at him and frowned with the benign puzzlement of a young child meeting a stranger. "Hullo."

Jack tried to say hello back, but what came out was more of a dry croak.

"Brendan," Ariadne crouched down next to him, smiled, and pointed up. "This is an old friend of Mommy's. This is Jack."

"Hullo, Jack."


End file.
